IT TAKES A TOUGH LAW TO HOLD HER

BEDFORD HILLS, N.Y. - Martha Weatherspoon makes her way across the waiting
room at the women's prison. "Don't try to get away, now," a correction
officer says.

It's a jailhouse joke. Ms. Weatherspoon is 73 and is going nowhere slowly.
She walks with a cane, has a long scar where they opened her up to replace
her right knee, and wears loose sandals to accommodate a persistent corn on
her little toe. And she is not due to leave prison until just before her
80th birthday.

Ms. Weatherspoon is serving 20 years to life for drug sale and possession.
Her age and condition mean nothing under toughest-in-the-nation drug laws
that Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller signed 29 years ago today, calling them
"the strongest possible tools to protect our law-abiding citizens from drug
pushers."

The laws arose from frustration in Albany over the intractable heroin
epidemic. They require longer sentences for sale of two ounces or
possession of four ounces of narcotics than the minimum sentences for rape
and manslaughter. Judges have no discretion, there's little use in
appealing, and grants of clemency are rare.

All the cards are in the hands of prosecutors, who are the laws' strongest
defenders, warning nervous lawmakers against appearing soft on crime.

Today's anniversary will bring calls for change from a widening array of
advocates, now including the laws' original sponsor, clergymen, judges and
elected officials, not to mention an organization of inmate relatives
called Mothers of the Disappeared. Gov. George E. Pataki declared in his
State of the State address: "Let's reform the outdated Rockefeller drug
laws." But in Albany, good ideas have only a casual relationship with
legislative action.

Politically, it is easier to let Martha Weatherspoon sit behind razor wire
at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Not that it's a bad place. It's
a Smith College of prisons, and Ms. Weatherspoon, who entered at the age of
60 with a third-grade education, has taken advantage of it.

She learned pottery and went to school, stopping only when her aging,
injured back made it painful to sit in class. "I've learned a lot of
things," she said. "I never knew fractions or division."

She has already served 13 years, more than some violent criminals. And now
she has become a testament to the simplistic reasoning behind the
Rockefeller laws.

Ms. Weatherspoon grew up farming in Alabama and came north, first cleaning
houses in the New York City suburbs and then picking vegetables and fruit
on the farms around Syracuse. She fell from a ladder while picking apples
in the early 1980's, cracking her ribs and leaving her disabled and
destitute. Drugs hooked two of her four daughters. "It broke my heart," she
said. But then, Ms. Weatherspoon started dealing drugs to make money. "I
bought furniture for my apartment, clothes and lots of food," she said.
"Then I stopped."

Then she started again, procuring eight ounces of cocaine for a man who
turned out to be an undercover officer. "She made some bad choices,
beginning with selling drugs," said Richard Southwick, a federal
prosecutor, who prosecuted Ms. Weatherspoon when he was an assistant
district attorney. Ms. Weatherspoon rejected a plea deal and a reduced
sentence, choosing to fight instead. She ended up with 20 years, which
feels like a life sentence.

"It is illegal and there is punishment," said Shirley Witherspoon, Ms.
Weatherspoon's daughter, who spells her last name differently. "But this
harsh a punishment for a woman of her age?"

Ms. Weatherspoon's daughter does not argue that all prison time is bad. She
credits her own six-month prison term in 1994 with breaking her drug addiction.

BUT even Ms. Weatherspoon's prosecutor can not argue that her lengthy term
makes sense. "One has to ask oneself," he said, "what's being served by her
continued incarceration?"

Apparently not drug control at the subsidized apartment complex where Ms.
Weatherspoon lived and sold drugs. "Drugs were all over the place," said
Shirley Witherspoon.

Ask law enforcement officials now about the complex on Syracuse's east side
and you'll hear the same frustration that motivated Albany lawmakers a
generation ago. Drugs have survived the efforts of the police and apartment
managers. Even a name change worthy of politicians - from Hilltop
apartments to Rolling Green Estates - hasn't helped. "They can put Happy
Acres on it," said Ed McQuat, the chief of narcotics for the Onondaga
County district attorney's office. "It is what it is."